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How to Repair Stripped Door Hinge Screw Holes

August 18, 20160 comment

I’m not sure what caused the screws to strip on my older daughter’s bedroom door. I suspect it’s all the door slamming (she’s 12). She claims it’s her sister’s loud knocking on her door trying to get her attention.

Regardless of the cause, a bunch of stripped screw holes makes it hard to close the door. I kept putting the screws back in, and they kept popping back out. I mean almost all of the screws, too.

If only one screw out of the three was okay, in all three of the hinges, it would probably work well enough. It got to the point, though, that there were too many stripped screws for the door to close right.

All of the instructions I found online for repairing stripped door hinge screws involve filling the screw hole somehow. The articles I located used variations on the same theme – putting some sort of filler or glue in the hole and letting it dry, then re-inserting the screw.

I admit that I didn’t even try this for my daughter’s bedroom door. I’ve attempted this type of thing on other stripped screw holes in the past and got nowhere. It’s possible I wasn’t doing it correctly, but if it didn’t work for me before, I figured it wasn’t going to work this time.

Fortunately, a friend suggested another approach. He said the door probably uses 1.5″ wood screws (and he was right). He said to buy some 2.5″ wood screws and use a drill to screw them into the holes.

Since they’re longer, they go in deeper – past where the hole is stripped – creating a new drill hole at the end. It worked like a charm.

It remains to be seen how well the new door screws will hold up. I’ve warned my daughters to be careful with bedroom doors if they want to still have bedroom doors that actually close.